lunartan

FearTheGorgon wrote:Look I think this whole thing is getting a little ridiculous. I'm very sorry for you and your family and believe your story is true. I didn't like the design and thought it was only fair that someone comment on it since it seemed to be getting a free pass. But I also know where these cats came from, I was hoping you'd come out and say it yourself, but your design is simply two copyrighted Corbis images put together. As far as I can tell, you didn't do anything unique to them other than add a tail to the mom cat. They look pretty much just like they did in the pictures. If it has made a difference for people then that is a good thing, but I don't think you personally have done anything other than put someone elses photos on a shirt and try to make people feel sympathy for you to get votes. I'm sorry if this offends people that like this shirt, but I think this whole thing is unfair to other designers and the people that would buy this, and to Corbis since its their photos that would be on woots shirts.

CAMMS wrote:I am fairly familiar with Corbis' cats/kittens. I would be interested in a link to the image/s you are comparing this design to.

I wonder if this design would be taking so much heat if it was not in the fog?

the kitties actually do look like a mirror image (facing the other direction) of this photo with different markings... dunno...

this cat was on the same results page, kinda resembles mom sans tail (again facing the other direction w/ different coloration), but not as clear of a connection as the kittens... dunno...

daedalusknight

FearTheGorgon wrote:I'm sorry if this offends people that like this shirt, but I think this whole thing is unfair to other designers and the people that would buy this, and to Corbis since its their photos that would be on woots shirts.

Uhm, no. This is clearly a drawing and not "their photos." A drawing, I might add, that is not a line by line trace of any photo or number of photos. Yes, I used photos as reference for this image. I said so above. Creating a drawing using the poses of cats from an image is not the same as using that image. Artists use the poses that other artists have used all the time. It's not copyright infringement. I didn't just cut and paste their exact images onto a shirt, as you seem to want to lead people to believe. The markings, the fur stylings, all the fiddly little details are my own.

I'm not sure what motivates you folks to go to such lengths to discredit me, but please feel free to submit a tattle to Woot and see if they agree with your comparisons.

FearTheGorgon

daedalusknight wrote:Uhm, no. This is clearly a drawing and not "their photos." A drawing, I might add, that is not a line by line trace of any photo or number of photos. Yes, I used photos as reference for this image. I said so above. Creating a drawing using the poses of cats from an image is not the same as using that image. Artists use the poses that other artists have used all the time. It's not copyright infringement. I didn't just cut and paste their exact images onto a shirt, as you seem to want to lead people to believe. The markings, the fur stylings, all the fiddly little details are my own.

I'm not sure what motivates you folks to go to such lengths to discredit me, but please feel free to submit a tattle to Woot and see if they agree with your comparisons.

No one is saying you didn't draw it, the point is this is essentially the exact same image as the originals with no unique content from you (I think this is the mother cat). Maybe you just didn't know that many designs have gotten rejected for this. I think someone once did ceiling cat in a new style and it still got rejected.

daedalusknight

FearTheGorgon wrote:No one is saying you didn't draw it, the point is this is essentially the exact same image as the originals with no unique content from you

The composition is unique. The markings are unique. The fur edges are unique. The colorations are unique. Just copying the poses is not copying the image as a whole. Overlay the two mother cat images and I'm sure you'll see how different they actually are, just as the kittens themselves are different.

FearTheGorgon wrote: Maybe you just didn't know that many designs have gotten rejected for this. I think someone once did ceiling cat in a new style and it still got rejected.

Really? Please show me that rejection. I'd like to see how similar they are.

I might go to bed before I get to see it. I'll try and check in sometime tomorrow to see.

guitaryan6969

Wow really woot doesn't pick them? Ohh we pick them right? Wow I had no idea.....no ****, people like you are the reason woot always ends up with cartoon girl shirts. It seems like ignorance is truly bliss....

bluchez

guitaryan6969 wrote:Wow really woot doesn't pick them? Ohh we pick them right? Wow I had no idea.....no ****, people like you are the reason woot always ends up with cartoon girl shirts. It seems like ignorance is truly bliss....

Woot picks 4 a week and the masses pick 3. Two of the shirts in your signature are shirts picked by woot and two are shirts picked by the voters. So, to be fair, you need to blame woot and the people, not just one.

JadenKale

SydneyB wrote:This is cute! The expressions on their faces are great, and I totally love the colors!!! It would go with just about everything in my wardrobe :D

(BTW, Lil Nessie is my all time favorite ever Woot shirt!!!)

Thanks Sydney for the vote and the critique! I'm glad that you like it so much! If/when it doesn't place, I'll probably be making it into a shirt anyhow for people to purchase. I'm thinking of opening a shop on spreadshirt (instead of my current shop on cafepress) pretty soon. I have some older designs I want to make as well as create some new ones that I know woot won't run.

And thanks so much for showing the Nessie love!!! I'm glad that people are still buying him up!

oopsiedaisy

daedalusknight wrote:Thank you, Oopsie, for sharing that. It shows that though the cats are in the same poses that they are clearly different images. Can I go to bed now?

So why wasn't this disclosed for everyone to see for themselves in the first place? If it doesn't bother you, it shouldn't bother anyone else...you were even asked specifically if it was drawn freehand, you claimed it was referenced and danced around the issue of tracing, and the *.gif shows that we can't believe that. The kittens are lifted directly from the photograph, and changing minor details doesn't change the initial fact. Will you go to the original photographer and ask them if it is okay for twenty thousand dollars or more to exchange hands based solely on work that would not exist without theirs (for future reference - it's highly unlikely that they walked into a fully setup studio, kittens posing perfectly, clicked a button on the camera and walked out, if you happen to not like photography as some people do)? There's a reason there is pricing on the site that you used.

lunartan

great expressions on the toons as always. another fantastic design. it best exemplifies mother's day out of the top handful of designs imo - bouquet of people and "special box with a tasty treat inside" ~ *giggles*. good luck, gmv

There are others that have been designed by looking at a piece (I hate bringing up spryte again as an example, but it was a huge point of contention during the Trompe L'Oeil derby) and it wasn't too sure if they took the piece directly or if it was drawn from scratch and then modified to look like it but her Coeur de la Mer was allowed to stay. HOWEVER, it was not in the fog at any point. So I don't know if the rules will be more stringent in those circumstances.

And the Ceiling Cat *ahem* Chest Cat was rejected more because there was a shirt similar to it on the internet already. Just wait and see what Joel does. He still has over 24 hrs to change his mind.

tjflashman77

This was my first derby submission ever. I couldn't finish it in time and submitted it way too late but wanted to put it up anyway. I don't know if it can pass the pg13 requirement, but I tried. I will appreciate any comments or critiques. Thanks much.

Greatest song ever written about JFK here. NSFW... or children... or anyone who's offended by the idea that JFK might have been a robot... fair warning.

daedalusknight

llo. srsly? i mean REALLY? you are going to deny tracing that photo? "referencing" does not mean directly copying every element of a picture - which is precisely what you did.

This is most certainly not a live trace. Here's what a live trace of that image would look like:

I don't have the settings quite right because I haven't played around with that tool, but as you can see the contours of the original design are different than the contours in my shirt image. I absolutely did not copy every element of that picture. You should clearly be able to see how different they are just by looking at the markings alone, not to mention the fur outlines.

I really hope that resolves this for everyone, though I have a feeling I will keep on being attacked anyway. I'm going to be away this afternoon and most of the evening. I really don't want to come back home tonight to find that I've dropped out of the fog because I wasn't able to defend myself against claims made against me at those times. I hope that these attacks are not a majority viewpoint here and I trust in Woot to make a fair judgment here.

FearTheGorgon

daedalusknight wrote:This is most certainly not a live trace. Here's what a live trace of that image would look like:

I don't have the settings quite right because I haven't played around with that tool, but as you can see the contours of the original design are different than the contours in my shirt image. I absolutely did not copy every element of that picture. You should clearly be able to see how different they are just by looking at the markings alone, not to mention the fur outlines.

I really hope that resolves this for everyone, though I have a feeling I will keep on being attacked anyway. I'm going to be away this afternoon and most of the evening. I really don't want to come back home tonight to find that I've dropped out of the fog because I wasn't able to defend myself against claims made against me at those times. I hope that these attacks are not a majority viewpoint here and I trust in Woot to make a fair judgment here.

I think they will make a fair judgment. The fact that someone showed that you put copyrighted images on a shirt without making major changes to them is not an attack either. People do the exact same thing and get rejected for it all the time, it shouldn't come as surprise. The 1% of changes to the overall image isn't nearly enough to justify allowing the shirt to continue in the derby. Over half the markings on the cats stayed exactly the same. Almost every line is identical and in the same place. The most major change you made was flipping them horizontally. The issue is of copyright not of tracing. This design is an obvious copyright problem.

daedalusknight

FearTheGorgon wrote:I think they will make a fair judgment. The fact that someone showed that you put copyrighted images on a shirt without making major changes to them is not an attack either. People do the exact same thing and get rejected for it all the time, it shouldn't come as surprise. The 1% of changes to the overall image isn't nearly enough to justify allowing the shirt to continue in the derby. Over half the markings on the cats stayed exactly the same. Almost every line is identical and in the same place. The most major change you made was flipping them horizontally. The issue is of copyright not of tracing. This design is an obvious copyright problem.

When someone accuses my design of being 99% similar to a copyrighted work, that feels to me like an attack. Perhaps you don't see it that way, but please understand my perspective.

I think we've both fully made our cases here. Your claim is that the works are too similar, that the lines are nearly exactly the same and thus this shirt should be rejected due to copyright infringement.

My claim is that the lines are not nearly exactly the same. That the original design and my own are significantly different and that it does not constitute copyright violation.

I think we've both agreed to let Woot be the arbiter here. They have my large size image and now have the other images as well. Let's let Woot compare the two and decide just how similar they are. I'd like to let the matter rest on that point, unless you have anything to add to my above assessment of our differing points of view? Let's leave it up to Woot and we will see by the end of the derby which one of us Woot agreed with. Do you agree to leave it at that?

jenny78

You're just doing damage control now. What's done is done. You got called out, who cares? Why don't you just ask woot to remove it already, and stop trying to defend a trace of a copyrighted photo. So, it's not traced EXACTLY like the picture? Doesn't matter. In the motion derby someone entered a little boy dancing, and it got rejected because people recognized it as Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, and it wasn't even traced. Traced or not people will recognize it as the original photo. I was actually agreeing with you at first because most cats do look alike, but after oopsie posted the morphing picture it was obvious. Here's a thought. If those cats are original, and not traced then draw some different and original cats in a different pose, resub with your sad story, and gain even more sympathy votes because you had to resub to donate to charity. Just be original. You can't trace stuff around here, or try to submit something that isn't original. These people are like detectives. They.Will.Call.You.Out.

Woot.com is operated by Woot Services LLC.
Products on Woot.com are sold by Woot, Inc., other than items on Wine.Woot which are sold by the seller specified on the product detail page.
Product narratives are for entertainment purposes and frequently employ
literary point of view;
the narratives do not express Woot's editorial opinion.
Aside from literary abuse, your use of this site also subjects you to Woot's
terms of use
and
privacy policy.
Woot may designate a user comment as a Quality Post, but that doesn't mean we agree with or guarantee anything said or linked to in that post.